Throwing Stones and Slaughtering Sheep at the Hajj

Outside a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Mecca, men hang around looking to work for tips, paid in cash or in chunks of meat.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

Outsourcing the messier religious duties

Usually, the post office is where you send mail or pay your bills. In Saudi Arabia during the hajj, it’s where you pay for your animal sacrifice.

It costs 460 riyals, or about $120, to have a sheep slaughtered. The sacrifice, known as the hadi, is incumbent on all pilgrims, who must donate at least two-thirds of the meat to the poor.

Modern pilgrims usually have a slaughterhouse near Mecca do this for them, via the local post office.

How do you know your animal was sacrificed? By text message, of course.

Outside Saudi Post in Mina, the sprawling tent city where pilgrims live for part of the hajj, Marwan Nabil, 22, who is from Yemen, began to worry when he had not received his confirmation.

“The system is down, but don’t worry, it will be done in an hour,” said Faisal al-Harbi, a postal worker.

It was all so neat and tidy.

Not so in a humid, sweaty slaughterhouse on the edge of Mecca: Men in stained robes hauled flailing sheep into the building. One man dragged his prey by its leg, and another carried one of the animals on his back.

Wheelchair pushers are common in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. They take pilgrims on laps around the Kaaba and to religious sites where pilgrimage rites are completed.

Rolling through the hajj

For pilgrims who are not strong enough to endure the long trek of the hajj, there are men with wheelchairs for hire who will push them from site to site, ritual to ritual.

But it’s not cheap. One wheelchair pusher told me he charged older clients 200 riyals, or about $53, for a day.

I asked him how he set his price, and if he charged by weight.

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A woman preparing to throw stones at a pillar that Muslims believe symbolizes the devil, in a ritual known as Jamarat, which takes place over the last three days of the hajj.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

Careful, the devil may duck

On the third day of the hajj, pilgrims throw rocks at three stone pillars near Jamarat Bridge in a re-enactment of Ibrahim (or Abraham) stoning the devil as he tries to follow God’s commandment.

Jamarat has been a notorious choke point for hajj crowds. That’s where hundreds, maybe thousands, of pilgrims died last year in a crush of people. In 2004, my sister was caught in one of the hajj throngs.

Security officials this year are trying to limit the number of pilgrims who can go to Jamarat at any given time. To avoid dangerous backups, officials have instituted one-way pedestrian roads for pilgrims from the tent city of Mina to the Jamarat building. And directions flash in English and Arabic to keep people moving.

I collected 49 small rocks in an empty water bottle for the ritual, and some more experienced pilgrims showed me how to carefully but purposefully throw my stones. Tip: Nobody likes a lefty. After throwing my first batch of stones with my left hand, I was politely corrected. I joked that any devil could duck my right-handed throw.

Sept. 13, 2016

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As just one of two million pilgrims, Diaa Hadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, battled huge crowds to perform the sacred rites of the hajj, even as a V.I.P. treated to helicopter rides and other perks.CreditCreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

Answers about the hajj

I grew up in an observant Muslim family in Canberra, Australia, but stopped wearing a head scarf in college and now, at 38, lead a largely secular life. Naturally, as a reporter, I came on my first hajj — the five-day pilgrimage, filled with rituals, that is required of every Muslim — with many questions.

How would people from stunningly different places, like Inner Mongolia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and New Jersey, interact? Who gets to kiss the rock lodged inside the Kaaba, the black cube that pilgrims circle seven times? What would I pray for on the second day atop Mount Arafat, a time and place in which our tradition tells us God answers petitions? Where do two million people poop?

I’m still working on my list (scroll down for video and snapshots), but I took some time to answer questions that readers submitted on nytimes.com.

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A woman paused during her circulations of the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

That mysterious black box

What is inside the Kaaba? Has it been rebuilt over the centuries? Do men and women walk around the Kaaba at the same time?

— Swaroop Conjeevaram, North Royalton, Ohio

Are women and men allowed to circle the Kaaba together, or are the genders segregated?

— Mary Ann Hall, North Charleston, S.C.

Only very high-level delegations are allowed in the Kaaba, and not often. There are blurry videos online that seem to show it mostly empty save for two pillars, an altar, incense lamps and plaques on the wall. What we can say for sure is what is not there: images of the gods that pre-Islamic Arabs once worshiped and kept inside the Kaaba. I love the idea that the place Muslims must pray to is empty. Muslims are internalizing in every prayer that the one god they worship cannot be represented in an image and cannot be imagined, to the point where the house sanctified to God is empty.

The Kaaba is renovated from time to time, but sparingly so, out of respect for the structure’s importance to Islam.

Men and women do walk around the Kaaba at the same time. In that way, it’s a unique holy site in Islam where the sexes mix and undertake their rites together.

What is the connection between the Kaaba and Allah?

— Daan Bijdevaate, the Netherlands

Muslims believe that the prophet Ibrahim — the biblical Abraham — built the Kaaba to worship the one true God. Some think it sits on the site where Adam, the first human, had his own prayer space. In all cases, Muslims see it as the oldest house of worship for the one God; it is also called Beit Allah, House of God. The pilgrim, in turn, is a “guest of the House of God.”

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Pilgrims pray in any space they can find — in this case near al-Baik, a popular Saudi fast-food chain that has a branch in the enormous square in the tent city of Mina.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

No Christians (or atheists) allowed

Are non-Muslims allowed to watch the hajj, such as tourists or visitors?

— Sarah C., Santiago, Chile

Why are non-Muslims not allowed in Mecca?

— Fabian Babich, Sydney, Australia

Are Christians welcome to observe the rituals?

— Erin Bunting, Aliquippa, Pa.

Only on the live television broadcasts. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter the holy sites, based on the Quran’s Chapter 9, Verse 28, which says, “O believers, verily the polytheists are impure, so let them not approach the Masjid al-Haram after this, their final year.” This is so rigidly enforced that there is a special highway bypassing the area.

In any case, there’s no room. The Saudi government already limits the number of people allowed into Mecca during hajj to about two million; many countries have a lottery system to select pilgrims. I met a Palestinian man who had applied for seven years and, at 72, had worried that he might die before seeing the holy sites.

About that bathroom issue

How is it going with the bathroom situation?

— Lynn Bender, Davis, Calif.

I think the Saudis have gone to some effort to try to make bathrooms as available as possible. Nobody has peed in front of me, as happened to members of my family when they came here. But we are on the move so much that sometimes I have to hold it in for hours. Luckily, we’re not eating much heavy food. Also, since my journalist visa makes me a V.I.P. guest of the Saudi government, I’m staying in a compound where there are clean toilets and showers.

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A worker at Jamarat sprayed pilgrims with water to cool them down in temperatures that rose above 100 degrees.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

How accessible are relief stations for, say, heatstroke?

— Ahad Chowdhury, Chino, Calif.

That was something I worried about a lot before I came. I have not seen many medic stations, but I have seen ambulances and hospitals. Also, pilgrims are constantly spraying one another with water to avoid overheating, and many places have structures that emit a fine mist to cool you down.

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Indonesian pilgrims on the side of a road leading to Jamarat Bridge, the site of three pillars that Muslims believe symbolize the devil.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

How’s the social life?

Do people stay with the people they came with (or stay alone), or do they also connect with strangers and make new friends?

— Ani Grosser, Lenox, Mass.

Well, my mum was hoping I’d find a husband here! Usually pilgrims come in delegations and stay with them in the same hotels, travel on the same buses and share the same meals. Except for interviews, it’s been hard to meet people because they tend to move in big units.

In my news media delegation, there is a Yemeni woman who looks like a sweet granny until she flips on her niqab. She’s always smiling and she’s my favorite.

Do young men and women try to make friends?

— Mo Kareem, Houston

I don’t see much mixing, and it’s hard to see where it could happen, except perhaps while circulating the Kaaba. Men and women mostly pray separately, and they sleep in separate quarters. It’s also forbidden for even married people to have sex during hajj, so I’m guessing that any premarital mixing, which Islam already sees as sinful, would be considered doubly bad!

The final ritual

I saw an ad for the hajj at a tour company and one package had animal sacrifice as an option. What is the deal with this?

— Beth Harrison, Millburn, N.J.

I wish I had that option! One requirement of the hajj is for each pilgrim to ritually slaughter an animal — sheep, cow, camel or goat — at the end. If your hajj package does not have a sacrifice option, which means the tour company does it on your behalf, you can also buy a coupon here in Mecca for a slaughterhouse to take care of it. Pilgrims who do it soon enough receive a confirmation by text message that their chosen animal has been slaughtered, and the government undertakes to distribute the meat to the poor around the world.

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A woman walking out of the enormous structure that envelops the Jamarat pillars.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

What to wear?

I am interested to know your (inner) feelings about bikini and burkini before and after the hajj.

— Mohammed Basith, New York

I think both bikinis and burkinis — the full-body swimsuits designed to adhere to Islamic modesty codes and banned recently by some French beach towns — are fine. I find it offensive when any faith (including, yes, Islam) dictates what a woman should wear. I also find the contemporary secular obsession with women needing to be thin and to look young to be depressing.

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Bustling crowds are always part of the hajj.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

Avoid the crowds

Is there an off-season where one can do the full hajj but with fewer teeming multitudes?

— Steven Adkins, Aucamville, France

Nice idea, but the full hajj can begin only on the 8th of Dhul-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar. The good news is that it’s a lunar calendar, so sometimes hajj is in the winter, a lovely time to visit this desert plain.

If you really can’t handle crowds, there is always umrah, a kind of mini-pilgrimage Muslims can do anytime. You mainly circle the Kaaba and walk between the hills of Safa and Marwa, which are now enclosed within the sprawling (and air-conditioned) Grand Mosque.

I get nervous and tetchy in crowds, but so far I’ve done O.K. The fear melts away, and at some point you stop caring about the sweat and viruses everybody is sharing.

Sept. 12, 2016

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During the second day of the hajj, pilgrims prayed at Mount Arafat on Sunday.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

A mountain of water bottles

The pilgrims’ chants of “Here I am, O Lord” were barely audible over the crunch-crunch of plastic water bottles squashed underfoot as we jostled toward Mount Arafat on Sunday, the greatest day of the annual hajj. Muslims believe it is when God will answer all sincere prayers offered there.

As the sun blazed, men and boys splashed the crowds gleefully with the last ounces from their bottles. Some ducked their heads under gushes from a supply tower, and a few kind souls offered to turn their spray bottles onto strangers’ faces.

At first I was disappointed to see the mess of bottles and mud, a cleaning man in bright yellow and green looking on helplessly: I had thought Arafat would be austere and clean. But the pilgrims’ cheery mood brightened my own.

Of course it was dirty. Two million people were walking together on a hot day to a rocky hill and sucking down bottles of water. Of course the cleaner couldn’t sweep it up — yet; he could cause a deadly crush if he got in the way of that river of pilgrims. So I, too, crunched the bottles, tried not to slip, let people spray me with water. I even prayed.

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About a million men have their heads shaved on the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. But who does all the shaving? And where does the hair go? Times correspondent Diaa Hadid seeks the answers.

Hairway to heaven

At the end of the hajj, men are required to shave their heads, and women to cut a lock of hair. At the busy barber complex near the Grand Mosque, they’ll buzz you with a razor (disposable) or scissors for $4; a machine cut is $2.70. Signs around the mosque warn pilgrims not to cut hair inside the complex — it turns out some people like to D.I.Y. at Islam’s holiest site.

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Between prayers, shopping for gold, and medicine to warn off hajj flu.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

A little something to take home

I mean no disrespect when I say Mecca is, well, a mecca for shopping. People have come here to pray, but even five times daily leaves time for the glittering gold shops that line Ajyad Street.

This year’s big sellers: lightweight rings and white, rose and yellow bracelets so finely spun that they feel like cotton candy on the wrist. Traders, as they do, lament that last year was better — instability throughout the Middle East has left fewer buyers for the higher-priced bling.

For those with lighter wallets, children hawk velvet prayer rugs decorated with images of the Kaaba for $2.60. People sell flip-flops for the inevitable pilgrim who has lost her shoes somewhere around the Grand Mosque, calling out the prices in Urdu: “Panj! Panj! Panj!” Five! Five! Five! The pharmacy on Ajyad Street is constantly packed, doing a roaring trade in antibiotics — hajj flu again — and anti-diarrhea pills.

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A way to count prayers.CreditDiaa Hadid/ The New York Times

Fitbit for the soul

Sitting next to a group of Saudi women who resembled large black crows in their billowing robes, double face veils and gloves, I noticed they all wore little rings that looked like miniature pedometers. When I asked how many miles one woman had walked that day, she laughed.

It turned out the rings were electronic prayer counters. Muslims often keep track of individual prayers like “I seek God’s forgiveness,” believing that they earn credit for a good deed, or hasana, with each supplication. Prayers uttered at the Grand Mosque are said to be worth 100,000 times those said elsewhere.

One of the women, Hanan, showed me her counter: 266, and it was only noon. Then she thrust the device into my hands and told me to “keep it, so you can always count your prayers.” I politely declined.

So what did I pray for?

The big and the small. For Syria. For refugees to find homes and acceptance. That children would go to sleep with full stomachs and mothers able to love and care for them. I prayed for my friend’s mother who has cancer, and tried to remember all the other friends, most of them secular, who shyly asked me to sneak in a word for them.

Right before we had to leave Arafat, I remembered Mum making me promise to pray for a husband, and so I did.

Sept. 11, 2016

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On a hectic day at the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest sites, Diaa Hadid, a New York Times correspondent, felt a sudden call to prayer.

God, if you’re listening ...

My mum, of course, has instructed me to pray for a husband as I make my first hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of every Muslim. Also: the health of her best friend and the release, from jail in Egypt, of the son of my aunt’s maid.

On the second day of the hajj — this year, Sunday, Sept. 11 — pilgrims will clamber onto Mount Arafat to ask for God’s forgiveness and make specific requests by prayer. Muslims believe that a supplication at that place at that time will be answered.

Along with Mum’s list, I’ll be praying for the health of a friend’s mother who is fighting cancer, and the continued happiness and health of my family and friends. A few friends who are secular Muslims like me asked that I throw in a word for them, and I will. God, if you are listening, peace would be really nice. I’m not so sure about the husband.

I have been asking all the people I meet in Mecca what they’ll be praying for on Mount Arafat:

■ Mervat, a 30-year-old cardiologist from Yemen, said she would ask “to go to paradise with my parents” and that her war-torn country might find peace.

■ Hassan Abbas, a doctor from Nigeria, hopes that his war-torn country might find peace.

■ Sayida Bakri, 68, seeks for terrorism to be defeated and “for Egypt to stand on its feet” after years of instability.

■ Abd Aziz Hj Johari — who is 18 and from Brunei, and who wore a T-shirt proclaiming, “I Love the Prophet” — shrugged at my question. His mother, Siti Hayun Hj Abdul Qadi, patted him affectionately and said she would ask that her son “become a good boy in the future, a good husband, especially, a good son.”

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The clothing many Muslims wear to the hajj does not contain pockets. Pilgrims are often seen carrying things on their heads.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

No place for cellphones and sundries

There are no pockets on the ihram that men wear during the hajj — the traditional dress consists of just two white sheets draped around their bodies. And it’s difficult for men and women to carry bulky bags in tight quarters. So the air rights above their heads become valuable personal real estate.

I’ve seen people carrying canteens of Zamzam water on their heads; others balancing their prayer mats like hats; and men from Afghanistan, Sudan, Oman and Egypt top themselves with carefully arranged turbans that seem to delicately float above their heads.

When I was a little girl and we traveled from Australia to Egypt to visit my mum’s family, I remember the enchanting women with large baskets perched on their heads, walking casually down crowded market streets, their empty arms swaying freely. I see some Palestinian women doing the same thing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where I work as a correspondent in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau.

A good idea knows no borders.

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I stopped for ice cream to take a break from my hajj reporting, and I met some very happy customers.

Is there anything that brings people together like ice cream?

The hajj is hot and grueling, and pilgrims flock to the Aesra ice cream shop near the Grand Mosque, where there are separate lines for men and women. “After worship, there’s a treat,” said Arar Hafsi, 51, an Algerian pilgrim, giggling.

I met one young woman in a niqab, her face and body covered in heavy black cloth, clutching a plastic cup filled with swirls of mango and strawberry. She said, laughing, that maybe she had one after every prayer — that’s five times a day.

“Is it good?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “it’s all there is.”

I know you want to know, so: A woman wearing a niqab eats ice cream by filling the spoon, then raising her veil just a bit and sticking the spoon in her mouth.

Qasim, 16, a worker I interviewed at the shop, gave free cups to me and Abdul-Rahman, the Saudi minder who follows me everywhere under the government’s rules for journalists covering the hajj. The ice cream tasted good. Also: It’s all there is.

Sept. 10, 2016

I made it to Mecca; my suitcase didn’t

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Samira shared her prayer mat, and she kissed my cheek.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

So as I made my first hajj, joining millions of Muslims from around the world on the annual pilgrimage to our holiest places, I did not have the antibiotics or disinfectant gel my family had insisted I carry to ward off what we call “the hajj flu.” I did not have a proper head scarf or even a prayer mat.

As the call to prayer sounded, I stood in a line of women on the street leading to the Grand Mosque and realized I would have no clean place to put my head during the full prostrations we make in a symbolic act of submission to God. I figured, never mind, this is the hajj, once in a lifetime. Then the woman standing next to me said, “I’ve made space for you.” We had to pray very close together, our heads were touching on that tiny mat.

Afterward, I thanked her. Her name is Samira, and she is a professor in Algeria. She kissed me on the cheek and said that was the way a Muslim should behave, and that I was her sister.

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When I was preparing for the hajj, the holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, my brother warned me of a peril in the skies: the birds.

Are these pigeons Muslim?

One of the main hajj rituals is to walk seven times around the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. My brother and sister, who did the hajj years ago, had told me about the pigeons that circle, seemingly in sync with the pilgrims, overhead. A sign from God? Perhaps, but helped along by the women selling bird feed to people who flung it joyously into the air around the Grand Mosque.

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Volunteers handed me Zamzam water and plastic bags for my shoes and kept the floor swept.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

I sipped holy water (but threw away the cup)

A group of Nigerian teenagers stood in a corner, calling out “Zamzam, Zamzam, Zamzam!” and passing out plastic cups of water. Zamzam is a well located within the Haram, the mosque that surrounds the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. Muslims believe God made it bubble up as the second wife of Ibrahim (Abraham in the Judeo-Christian bible), tried to soothe her thirsting child. A half-liter bottle sells for $4.95 on the internet.

I was spooked after reading an article saying Zamzam water had high levels of arsenic. But in the heat and exhaustion of the hajj, it tasted refreshing. I even stopped in front of an Egyptian man spraying people’s faces with the water as a small good deed — he said he did the same during the 2011 uprisings in Cairo. But I was worried when I saw pilgrims returning their empty cups to the Nigerians — this is how hajj flu spreads!

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In and around the Grand Mosque, I met a Chinese woman who showed me her Mandarin Quran. Some pilgrims proclaimed their nationality on their clothes.CreditDiaa Hadid/The New York Times

‘Malcolm X’ topped my pre-hajj reading list

A Chinese woman showed me her Mandarin Quran. I saw women from Uzbekistan who had their national flag sewn onto their head scarves, and men with “Kurdistan” emblazoned on their jackets. There were Pakistanis with beards dyed a cartoonish red, and one guy, who knows from where, in a gold sequined hat. He looked fabulous.

It reminded me of the little mosque of my childhood in multicultural Canberra, Australia. I grew up thinking it was normal to worship next to Muslims from Bosnia and Vietnam, Afghanistan and Jordan.

Walking around the Kaaba was like Canberra, writ large. There was something very incredible and lovely about being a tiny little human among tens of thousands of other humans, saying the same prayers and doing the same rituals.

Correction:Sept. 14, 2016

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the reporter’s handedness. She joked that any devil could duck her right-handed throw, not her left-handed one.

Diaa Hadid, a correspondent in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau, is chronicling her pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.